The European Association for Banking and Financial History (eabh) e.V.
Banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions are members of eabh.
eabh members recognise their responsibility towards society. Only a well functioning financial sector can help to increase the welfare of all.
eabh places current challenges of the financial sector into a historical context. Our historians work on long-term topics that matter to the management of financial institutions and policy makers.
eabh promotes archives. Accurate and accessible records of past activities are the indispensable foundation for a sustainable global financial system.
eabh circulates sound research and information upon which today’s decision makers can rely.
The legacy of the past continually resurfaces to determine actions in the present and the future. Through eabh membership institutions gain access to a global network of financial history experts who can provide competent advice.
eabh (ed.)
Piet Clement
Carmen Hofmann
Jakub Kunert (eds.)
Carmen Hofmann
Gabriella Massaglia (eds.)
Carmen Hofmann
Gabriella Massaglia (eds.)
eabh believes that safeguarding the records of financial institutions will improve the protection of global financial stability. Authentic and reliable memory systems are needed to understand current crises and to evaluate risks.
For that reason a project on archival legislation for finance (ALFF) has been started in 2012 with the objective of collecting information about best practices of financial institutions in building and improving their archives.
Conference
20 Jun 2019
St. Petersburg, Russia
This conference adopts a longue durée approach to the historical study of the design of financial systems and their related institutions and explores some of the following questions: how should we coordinate financial systems to make them beneficial for society as a whole? Are there identifiable and transferable factors that facilitated growth and development in some economies as compared to others? What components of a financial system are important, and in which periods and under what circumstances? How have different parts of financial systems interacted throughout history? How has the past shaped the role of finance today?
Archival Workshop
21 Jun 2019
St. Petersburg, Russia
This workshop is aimed at minting and financial institutions’ archivists, money museum curators and researchers. The extensive archives of mints are a treasure-trove of information often covering extended periods of time. Yet some of these archival treasures are only accessible to a handful of specialists or remain largely unknown to researchers and the public. This workshop aims to present these materials to a wider audience and make them more accessible to interested researchers and scholars.
Workshop
20 Mar 2020
Utrecht, Netherlands
Why was it that in developed Western economies, financial institutions like banks only began to reach deep into society during the 1960s and 1970s? What drove this expansion, why did it not come earlier, what alternative services did people use before, and when, how and why did formal services come to replace those alternatives? Was the expansion demand or supply driven, made possible by new technology or simply a function of rising personal incomes, fostered by governments and central banks, or the result of private entrepreneurship? What was the relationship between emerging welfare states and the rise of commercial banking?